ent has a positive connotation. Yet Pyncheon is jabbed at again as being righteous only when he has to be. But his character and purity, in reality, are severely flawed and occasional. The next statement is a dagger to Pyncheon as an inhumane and numb man. Judge Pyncheon sees his son as a " cast-off, an expensive and dissipated son." Pyncheon is ironically regarded for his righteousness, but has no love for his beloved son? He treats his son as a burdensome object hoarding time from his precious life: " delaying forgiveness until the final quarter of an hour of the young man’s life." Society does not see Hawthorne’s hard-heartedness and lack of conscience. To take drastic circumstances and brake his hatred in the very last minutes of his dying son’s short life, is not right. Although, doesn’t the narrator say that Pyncheon was wholesome and had " efforts in furtherance of the temperance-cause"? It is obviously totally false if it is considered to restrain oneself to a mere " five diurnal glasses of old sherry wine." This drinking is not monthly or weekly but daily and habitual. The periodic sentence concludes with an ironic effect with, " What room could possibly be found for darker traits?" After both sides have been scrutinized and revealed, Hawthorne explains that the public was misdirected by the " looking glass." Society was judging Pyncheon by his material wealth and status alone- a misrepresentation of the truth. Then, the final round of battle’s bell rang loudly. Hawthorne delivers the fatal blow to society’s nose. Hawthorne seizes the last word calling the Judge an " early and reckless youth... committed some one wrong act or that." Pyncheon is put under intense question from this point. The man who " studied propriety of his dress and equipment" and " cleanliness of his moral deportment" is a deceiver and a sham. Judge Pyncheon’s mentality is dissected as Hawthorne exclaims, " Should o...
